This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Sunday, January 17, 2016

"Son of Saul" gives a close-up look at personal redemption at a Nazi concentration camp

“Son of Saul” (“Saul fia”, 2015) by Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes (co-written with Clara Royer) tells a myopic story of life in the Auschwitz concentration camp in the last days of World War II.

The film is shot in the older 1:37:1 aspect ratio, to give it the look of an older movie, although in full color with Dolby Digital.

The story concerns prisoner Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig), a member of one of the Jewish Sonderkommando work units, assigned to dispose of bodies and process them into the crematoriums. Most members found out they would be put to death themselves after a few months.

New prisoners are sent to showers, and told they will be fed soup and given work as crastmen when they return. We hear their cries as they are gassed.

One day, a boy seems to survive, and the “doctors” have to strangle him, and then perform an autopsy. Saul thinks the boy may be his son, whom he hasn’t seen since capture. He fights to have a proper burial of his son as a form of personal redemption. He even attempts to enlist a rabbi (Jerzy Walczak) to help him.

In the course of the film, there is a rebellion and an attempt to destroy one of the crematoriums. Toward the end, some of the prisoners, crossing a dangerous stream, may be able to escape (to Krakow) and get arms in the woods, when another boy appears.

The film puts into the world of regimentation, and curiously reminded me of the shock of Army Basic in 1968, when one’s own immediate short-term comfort becomes a preoccupation.

It does not have the epic quality of, say, Steven Spielberg’s mostly black-an-white “Schindler’s List” (1993). But it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

I saw the film before a moderate late Saturday night audience at Landmark E Street in Washington DC. It did not sell out.

The opening chapter of my novel manuscript “Angel’s Brother” has two men meeting at the modern day memorial site at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but the novel does not return there. Ivisited it in May 1999, and had a one-day taxi from Krakow, having arrived on a train East from Berlin.

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